Contact Us

Practice the Power of Play

As the only program of its kind in the United States, the Master of Arts in Game Design drives students to stretch their capacities as designers, developers,
consumers, and game administrators and apply that to their unique field of interest.
Students bring to the program their own experiences—whether in
politics, science, art, history, marketing, or international studies—and
can choose from multidisciplinary courses across our schools of
communication, business, and arts.

What issue are you passionate about? Bring your creativity into play with a Master’s in Game Design. Through game design theory, development, and design, our students bring about behavior change, expand awareness, and make a difference. With award-winning faculty and real-world experience, our program prepares students for a career in all facets of game design, play theory, and engagement strategies. Students leave with the skills and experience they need to succeed in applying game design to non-game contexts.

Whether your next career step is local or global, you’ll gain the skills and network you need to succeed.

The Master of Arts in Game Design is a unique, multi-disciplinary 36-credit hour program focused on game design and game engagement mechanics intended to influence non-game contexts and challenges.

The program will develop students' intellectual capacity as designers, developers, consumers, and games administrators. Beyond traditional game design and development, students learn to tailor play design for distinct education purposes.

Required courses such as Games and Rhetoric and Games and Society take students beyond the fundamentals of building a great game. With their 9 credit hours of electives, students are able to choose from a variety of concentrations, or create one of their own.

Program Director Lindsay Grace is an internationally exhibited game artist and designer whose Critical Gameplay collection has been exhibited in Asia, Europe, North and South America. Together, with a team of impressive faculty, he is leading AU's Game Lab to a superlative position in persuasive play and public purpose games.

With a 4:1 full-time student to faculty ratio, Game Lab students benefit from one-on-one interaction with world-renowned faculty. From working with Game Studio clients to performing scholarly research, students are able to learn from, and work side-by-side with faculty.

You’ll be exposed to an exceptionally broad range of custom platforms, from Twine to Twilio (cloud-based telephony), from LAMP to Google Analytics, survey systems like Qualtrics and more!

AU Game Lab Student Brings Avatars to Life for ETS

Kirby Cofino, SOC/MA '19

Game Design

It's really about freedom and critical thinking.

During the summer of 2017, MA in Game Design student Kirby Cofino interned with the DIAMONDS research group in the San Francisco office of Educational Testing Service (ETS) on a speech system called HALEF, a "multimodal dialogue system." It's a computer program that allows a person to talk to a computer, and the computer responds. Cofino’s role in the development of HALEF was to create 3D virtual human avatars that synced up with the computer’s responses.

Frequently Asked Questions

There is no typical Game Lab student! Students bring their unique backgrounds and passions to the program, having addressed diverse topics such as mental health, social justice, journalism, politics, money management, and advertising. The program can lend itself to your particular area of interest.

Comparison chart to explain the differences in related master's programs to Game Design. This includes MA in the Game Design, MFA in Games and Interactive Media, MFA in Film & Electronic Media, MS in Computer Science, and the Certificate in Game Design.